Initial unemployment claims call to 308,000

Initial unemployment claims for the week ending September 28 were a seasonally adjusted 308k, the U.S. Department of Labor reports. This is a minor increase from the prior week’s revised reading of 307k and is yet another very positive report.

Significant weekly changes in individual states:

The insured unemployment rate was a seasonally adjusted 2.3%. This is an increase from the prior week’s 2.2% reading and is the second consecutive weekly increase. This is unusual for a statistic that doesn’t tend to move so rapidly.

The number of unemployment insurance recipients increased to 2.925 million from the prior week’s revised reading of 2.821 million. This is also a statistically significant week over week increase and is not consistent with the recent trend. This is the highest number of unemployment insurance recipients there have been in 5 weeks and suggests that current claims recipients are having a harder time finding work.